2012 Small Jazz Guitars – the Loar

The Loar is a guitar company who attempts to recreate guitars with the look of what some call the Golden Age of guitar making. This generally refers to the 1920s to 1930s. The name Loar of course pays homage to Lloyd Loar, one of the great designers of Mandolins and Guitars at Gibson. Lloyd Loar designed the F-5 Mandolin and L-5 Guitar among other accomplishments. The company, “The Loar” has no connection to Gibson other than attempting to recreate guitars with the feel of some of those early Gibson designs.

The Loar’s selection of small archtop guitars includes 3 models without cutaways and 2 models with Florentine cutaways. I’ll describe the cutaway models but you can see all of their archtop guitars here.

Model LH-350

This 16 inch wide cutaway is made from maple back and sides, mahogany neck and a solid spruce top. The estimated online price is currently above $700. The compensated bridge is made from Ebony but the fingerboard is rosewood. It has a Kent Armstrong floating humbucker pickup. The scale length is 24.75″ and the nut width is 1 3/4″. The guitar has polyurethane finish.

following image links to product page at Musician’s Friend for LH-350

Model LH-650

The LH-650 specifications are identical to the LH350 in most respects. The major difference is this guitar has a nitrocellulose finish instead of urethane. This make the finish more like guitars from the Golden Era. Many believe that urethane, though more protective, deadens the sound. The estimated online price is $1350.